The stairs I went down were for the delicate feet of residents and thus had black marble risers and pointless art hung at regular intervals. On the bottom landing was a solid fire door disguised by a black stained piano-finish veneer. In a proper, crappy car park there’d have been grimy vertical window slots to look through, but not here. I wondered who was on the other side.
I stopped and tried to clear my mind. The uncanny creates a disturbance in the world. Everyone feels it, the trick is to distinguish it from the all the random noise, the thoughts, memories and misfiring neurons, that fill our heads from moment to moment. It’s like everything else – the more you do it, the better you get. I used to think that Nightingale was alerted to Falcon cases by his extensive network of informants. But now I think maybe he’s just listening to the city.
Or maybe not. Because that would be freaky.
Nobody was fighting upstairs, or at least not with magic. But beyond the fire door I could feel a little tickle, like mouse claws scrabbling in the wainscoting of the material world. It wasn’t Martin Chorley. I know the razor strop of his signare. This was more familiar, like listening to an echo of my own voice.
Lesley.
The question was, did she expect me to come through that door? If I went straight in I might be able to catch her off guard while she was concentrating on whatever it was she was doing. Or she might be doing the low level magic to draw me out.
Or, I decided, I could be over-thinking things again.
I pushed open the fire door and stepped into the garage proper.
There were lift doors opposite and an opening to the right. I could smell old petrol and fresh carbon monoxide. Echoing off the clean concrete walls were periodic metal crunches as Lesley used impello to rip car doors open. I tucked myself behind a section of dividing wall and tried to work out where the noise was coming from.
Once I had narrowed it down to the left I had a quick look.
On the other side of the garage was a long row of parking spaces, each filled with a couple of tons of high status metal. It was mostly Chelsea tractors interspersed with midlife-crisis-mobiles including an Aston Martin Vanquish Volante that I wouldn’t have minded for myself. And two thirds of the way down the line, practically hidden behind an honest to god white Humvee, was Reynard Fossman’s ugly red Renault.
Judging by the three cars with their doors open, smoke still rising from the back of one, Lesley was methodically working her way down the line. Currently she had her back to me as she wrenched open the rear door of a Jaguar F-Pace.
I didn’t think she’d be that casual about her blind side if she was working alone, so I risked sticking my head out for a quick look left and right. Nobody else was in sight, but even so I started easing myself back towards the fire door and the stairs.
I figured that what with this being a basement and us having all the possible exits covered, it was probably not a bad idea to back off and await reinforcements. If only Nightingale could finish off whatever he was doing upstairs.
I caught movement in the corner of my eye and jumped left on general principles and suddenly found myself suddenly lying on my back with a ringing in my ears and the round white light in the ceiling above me going alarmingly in and out of focus. In policing it’s not a good idea to lie down on the job so I tried to roll over, but I’d barely shifted when a blow to my chest pinned me back down.
‘Stay down,’ said Lesley from outside my view. ‘Or Martin here will start breaking ribs.’
‘She does like to make me sound gangster, doesn’t she?’ said Martin Chorley. His voice was coming from the other side of the car park. He must have just come down the eastern set of service stairs. I heard his footsteps as he walked past me to reach Lesley. He was far too sensible to get close enough to look down on me and risk making himself a target – although I could tell he really wanted to.
‘We need to get a move on,’ he said to Lesley. ‘I left a trail of nasty surprises behind me but he won’t stay cautious for long.’
Something, impello at a guess, dragged me across the concrete and I heard a clattering sound as my staff was dragged behind me by its wrist strap. We both ended up in the middle of the roadway – the decking was strangely warm under my palms.
I felt for the handle of my staff, but it was yanked away, the strap cutting painfully into my wrist and palm until it snapped with a twang. That must have been another spell, because it should have taken my hand off at the wrist before it broke.
‘What’s this?’ asked Martin Chorley. ‘Ah, yes. A genuine army surplus battle staff. You don’t see many of those these days, do you? I wonder if you’ve kept it charged up.’
‘I wouldn’t touch it,’ said Lesley. ‘It’s probably booby trapped.’
What a good idea, I thought, let’s add that to the list.
Another clatter as my staff was kicked or spelled off the roadway and, if the sudden echo was anything to go by, under a nearby vehicle.
Great, I thought, that turned out to be useful in the end, didn’t it?
‘Did you find Reynard?’ asked Lesley.
‘No,’ said Martin Chorley. ‘He’s a slippery little shit, isn’t he? I’m hoping he’ll run into Nightingale or the plod and get himself shot.’
I risked turning my head, slowly, to see if I could locate either him or Lesley. He was standing three or four metres away in the centre of the roadway. He was wearing a tailored charcoal pinstripe suit cut in the modern style. He stood, legs slightly apart for balance, arms held loosely by his side – ready for action. I was happy to note that the suit jacket’s sartorial perfection had been marred by scorch mark that ran diagonally from shoulder to waist and his trousers were soaked through from the thighs downwards. Nightingale was obviously handing out lessons in appropriate work attire.
Lesley was to his right, continuing her search of the parked cars. I couldn’t see the Renault from here but the white Humvee it was hiding behind stuck out half a metre over the line. She continued her search of each vehicle in turn, going round to the back of every car and blowing the lock off the boot, checking inside with a quick scan of the front and rear footwells to ensure nothing was stowed in there. About thirty seconds a car, counting walking time.
‘So apart from the face,’ I said, ‘why are you working with this guy?’
Lesley ignored me, but the question obviously irritated Martin Chorley.
‘Because she’s properly English,’ he said.
‘And I’m not?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that I blame you for that, you understand. Your mother was no doubt enticed over to fill some vacancy in the NHS or to drive a bus, or some other job that the working man was too feckless to do himself.’
Or because she was jazz mad and couldn’t get a ticket to New York, I thought. He must have known a bit of my family history. I know he’d checked up on me, and had to have asked Lesley what she knew. My mum, who’d had a good job at the American library in Freetown, had unfortunately caught jazz off the radio and headed for the bright lights of the city, any city, and had found London and my father.
Or perhaps he thought being a jazz mad groupie was something only young white women did, or even more likely he just couldn’t be bothered to fit his intelligence together into a proper assessment. Thank god, because if he had he would have known about the Renault that was six cars down the line from where Lesley was currently, and carefully, blowing the bloody doors off a rather tasty silver Porsche.